Dead By Daylight recently added a Resident Evil chapter as DLC. The two survivors are Leon and Jill. Each comes with their own set of perks and benefits. For instance, Leon’s character has a flashbang perk that allows players to momentarily blind killers. While Jill has a perk that heals her halfway automatically when injured. The killer for this chapter is Nemesis. He also has his own perks and add-ons, and can punch survivors with his bare hands or hit them from a little distance with his whip. He's strong enough on his own, but with the addition of zombie AI helpers, he has become a touch too overpowered.
Traditionally in Dead By Daylight, the killers have to rely on their own devices to beat all the survivors. Some, like the Trapper, can place traps to ensnare unsuspecting survivors, but most have to actually hit the survivors to injure or down them. And then there are the killers that have ranged attacks, like Huntress or the Trickster. They throw their weapons, sometimes across a great distance, to injure their opponents.
These two attack types are generally not combined, in order to maintain the balance of the game, but Nemesis has quite the advantage because he not only has more of a ranged attack (even if not with the distance of someone like Huntress), he also has zombies that can both injure and down survivors.
Nemesis’ Zombie Helpers Are Too Powerful
What is particularly powerful about the zombies is that they are persistent and very difficult to get rid of. Survivors can temporarily blind them using items, or hit them with a locker or a palette, but that also alerts Nemesis to their location. The zombies can make it very difficult for survivors to perform the game's basic tasks, like fixing the generators, opening the exit gate, and even rescuing fellow survivors. In addition, Nemesis has an add-on that allows the zombies to rush the exit gates at the end of the game. These excellent helpers combined with an already strong killer makes for an extremely difficult challenge for survivors.
The addition of AI into Dead By Daylight is a good idea. It adds new gameplay and requires survivors to think about builds and play differently. The problem is how powerful they are. If zombies were only allowed to injure rather than down survivors, that problem might improve. It could look something like Legion’s frenzy, where if survivors are already injured, then they’d need to mend. This way the zombies would still be helpful - and an ongoing issue for survivors - but not blatantly overpowered. There is also an add-on that can increase the zombies’ movement speed by quite a bit. If zombies are going to be able to down survivors, this probably also needs to go.
Another way to make Nemesis more balanced would be to reduce the effective range of his whip. He is currently sometimes able to hit survivors around corners, but limiting the attack to a straight line would help level his offensive power. Additionally, he is able to hit survivors over palettes and through windows and at quite a distance, and mitigating that could also help level the playing field.
Nemesis is a very fun killer to play, with his new add-ons and AI companions adding a little something different to Dead By Daylight's core gameplay, and it's great to see the five-year-old game still getting new content. But in order to keep the game fair, Nemesis really needs more balancing. Whether that means nerfing he and his zombies slightly, or even giving the survivors a way to fight back more effectively, is entirely up the developers and the community.